Swaziland editor fired from king's newspaper

The editor-in-chief of the Swaziland Observer newspaper group, Musa Ndlangamandla, was fired last week after 12 years.

It appears that he fell out with the group's owner, the king of Swaziland, and the country's prime minister, Barnabas Dlamini.

Ndlangamandla said later that he would "rather eat grass" than work again for King Mswati, sub-Saharan Africa's last absolute monarch.

Under his editorship, many controversial stories involving the king were censored, all of which appeared in media outside the country.

But Ndlangamandla recently gave space in the paper to several pro-democracy advocates, writing: "I knew that this would get me in trouble with the king, the PM and other powerfuls. But we had to do it because that was the right thing to do."